Terahertz metamaterial designs for capturing and detecting circulating tumor cells

Terahertz (THz) metamaterials' unit cell designs are similar in dimensions with single cell culture array. In this work, three-dimensional metamaterial designs are proposed to be integrated into a microfluidic chip to make use of this similarity to separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from red blood cells (RBCs) with physical structure and detect CTCs with terahertz spectroscopy. Using split ring resonator as the basic building block, five different designs demonstrating three design approaches are presented with fabrication method. The detection sensitivity of the designs was examined by simulation. A maximum of 38 GHz resonant frequency shift can be achieved when the chip captures one CTC at each capturing spot. This work will lay the ground work for future use of THz metamaterials to diagnose and treat cancer. (paper)